“Meet Little Stub, my succulent.
Little Stub did in fact start as a little stub—
but that’s really just her name because she’s a little stub-
born.
I tried turning her pot toward different angles several times over the past weeks so she can grow towards the sunlight a little easier, but Little Stub just seems to grow in her own, unique lopsided way. I’m rooting for Little Stub, even though I’m not really sure why she likes growing along one corner of her home. Her “growth goal” doesn’t seem to be what you’d expect it to be— she didn’t take a complex learning session. I thought she’d meander her way to the most direct path to sunlight but she has a mind of her own; an ambitious plan that has me stumped. Maybe if I truly was stumped, as one of her long-lost cousins, a tree stump— I’d understand. But for now, I think Little Stub leaves me wondering about my plans for the future; and how it might be more interesting to think about following this journey of life in a more unconventional way.”
It can be hard to see how much I’ve grown in the past year—growth feels as though it’s been creeping onward like a vine, only noticed when I take a break from getting through to-do lists, mental notes and daily life events. I get more excited from seeing how everyone around me has grown as well, through their increasing comfort and ease in navigating through the field of medicine whether it’s deciphering arterial blood gas values or having a conversation with a patient.
To help me reflect and remember, I am working on noting down interesting quotes heard from school each day, and so far, I have written down random phrases from “the bladders and ureters are simply a convenience” to “pay attention to the patient’s actions– the body know what it needs and seeks it (particularly, in the context of salt craving in patients with pseudohypoaldosteronism).” Filtering through renal week certainly gets easier with a bit of humor.
As we learn about each body system at a molecular, physiological and anatomical level, it’s been amazing to realize how so much has been discovered within the limits of one bodily being—we are progressing because of the progress made by the people before us. In a way, each one of us is experiencing growth currently, but this seemingly personal growth limited to one’s self can also transcend time and space when it is then passed on to the generations beyond our own. I am curious to know what time will tell through future discoveries and advancements, but until then, I’ll try to be unwavering in stretching out my tendrils, reaching out for a glimmer of growth.
Name: Hannah Varkey
Cohort: 2023
Explanation of the work: Along the lines of growth and what growth means to each of us, this piece has been a reflection of a succulent's growth that perhaps parallels my own.
Bio: Hannah Varkey is an M2, and like her classmates at HMSOM, is in a continuous cycle of learning and re-learning as a student! She has lived in Texas and India, and over the years, New Jersey has steadily become home. She studied cognitive science and geology at Rutgers University, and her free time has included reading interesting news/research about these fields, taking care of her resilient (and forgiving) houseplants, and exploring the nature trails of NJ & NY. At times, she can also be found deep in thought, searching for a worthwhile dad joke or pun. In medicine, neurology and neonatology are specialties she has been drawn towards pursuing. Hannah's looking forward to being a part of the waves made by her peers at the Ripple Magazine!
It was a hot, bright day in med school orientation. We took turns standing in front of the lukewarm fan in the warehouse, packing rice into crates for our HD group service learning activity. Unwrapping pallet after pallet, we cut through the tough plastic. We finished our work and toured the rest of the facility. One of the rooms opened to boxes of weekend snack packages for the children of Hackensack. My heart beat faster as I thought to the not-so-distant past, standing in line at the local church on a weekend morning to get our school supplies, backpacks, and clothes for the year. These kids were in the same place I had been. The same kids that stayed behind during field trips and did worksheets in the hot classrooms with the lights off. The food baskets we got for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The groceries that were loaded into our unlocked car by other parishioners while my siblings and I sat in church. The excitement we felt when we received those same mundane snacks I now saw peeking at me from the neatly zipped plastic bags on that afternoon during orientation - fruit cups, mac and cheese, and other brightly colored treats. My heart beat faster.
Later, I sat at a table in a dingy Chinese buffet. My parents were taking me out to treat me after orientation was over. A few days ago, we had taken awkward family photos at the white coat ceremony. My dad wore his oversized, 30-year-old suit - broken out once a year for Easter and special occasions - and my mom beamed beside us. My mom leaned across the table and said in a low voice, “And did you see how many doctors stood up in the audience? It’s really wonderful that parents like us can send their children to medical school in America.” I sighed a little bit. They did not know half of the humiliation, injustice, and back-breaking labor I had gone through to get to this point. My mom caught my annoyed look and softened; she understood. Really, the previous 2 weeks had been incredibly significant for my family. My parents could now breathe easier, knowing that they could retire, despite having almost no savings, when I graduate. They breathe easier knowing that I will be happy doing what I always wanted to do. I had finally left the lower class. But honestly, it feels more like betrayal. Will I remember my mom calling everyone she could think of, crying and begging to friends and colleagues for $100 to pay the bills while my dad was away taking care of a family emergency in his home country and unable to work to support us? Will I remember when my mother missed her own father’s funeral because she couldn’t afford a plane ticket to Europe and had to care for 3 small children? Will I remember all of this when I am a doctor? Will I empathize with my patients as they pull crumpled bills out of their pockets at the front desk, trying to pay the copay? Or will I forget? Sometimes I feel like I have already forgotten, as I sit here in the million dollar classroom, with my brand new laptop, iPad, $200 stethoscope, and embroidered Patagonia jacket.
“Does anyone have any insights after your visit to the food bank?” my HD facilitator asks. I say nothing. There is too much to say.
Name: Olga Sokiran
Cohort: 2023
Hometown: Lake Hopatcong, NJ
Description of the work: I was inspired by other students sharing their stories at HMSOM Open Mic Night to share part of my own experience at the SOM.
Bio: Olga Sokiran is an M2 at HMSOM interested in Emergency Medicine. She was actively involved in music and art at her undergrad, Northeastern University, and is interested in continuing her creative endeavors throughout medical school and beyond.
Structural Principles week three: upper limb. Doused in the jarring fluorescence of the anatomy lab, my dissection partner and I sat hunched over our donor’s arm. His name was Roger. Roger’s hand rested in my free palm. It was gray, curled, taut. A scalpel was poised clumsily in my right hand as my partner uncurled the fingers for me. Our lab group made conversation as I ran the scalpel edge against resisting skin, watching it split open under the blade, revealing layers of deoxygenated pink muscle, yellowing aponeuroses. Amidst a flurry of inexperienced, hesitant movements, my partner and I talked about how hard it was to peel the skin of the fingers apart and what other steps we had to cover in the dissector. We talked as if this was a daily occurrence. The inherently intimate act of opening up and peering in was reduced to another item on our mental checklists. Lost in the growing exhaustion that accompanied even the earlier weeks of SP, the gravity of this moment did not settle in me until far later. Only after anatomy had ended, several weeks into our third course, did it settle in that I had been holding Roger’s hand.
Hands, for me, have always been the most precious part of the human body. It is one of the ways through which we express love, create, lessen loneliness and share our humanity. Through hands, we put pen to paper or type to make language tangible, make words come alive. Our written languages, the very thing that distinguishes our species from any other, preserves our beings, the ways in which we seek to exist in this world. Our hands weave words as we use sign language — how much care exists in the space of every letter.
It was holding my mother’s hand that helped me fall asleep each night as a child. It is the warm steadiness of my father’s hand as he caresses my sister’s forehead to comfort her when she’s sick. Here, the hand acts as a remedy more powerful than medicine. The reassurance transferred to us from the ones we love when they reach out and give our hand a squeeze, let us know they’re here, it’s going to be okay.
There are days I find myself thinking about Roger’s hands. It was more attached to his humanity than I’d let myself believe. I know the means by which he abducted his thumbs, the path oxygen took to supply his fingertips. But what I don’t know is if those same fingertips ever pressed down piano keys or strummed guitar strings, bringing messages from treble and bass clefs off of the page. And I wonder. I wonder if he wore a ring or two, if he twisted them in moments of mindlessness. I wonder if that hand walked a daughter down the aisle, wiped away his own tears. I wonder if those finger joints — or MCPs, DIPs, PIPs as we learned to call them — knew swelling, pain and tenderness; if so, how much? I wonder if he was a writer: did he prefer to watch the ink from his pen bleed in cursive or print? Perhaps it wasn’t ink at all. Perhaps that hand had a tremor and pencils gave him the option to erase any mistakes he made when writing.
Looking back, I wonder what stories Roger’s hands held and told over a lifetime. I wish I had sat in that moment more, let myself process how it felt to hold the hand of someone who once was. And realize how, in that whirlwind week of anatomy lab, Roger’s story had quietly become a part of mine.
Name: Zephyr Hameem
Cohort: 2023
Hometown: Salisbury, MD
Description of the work: Reflections following the completion of SP and the experiences from anatomy lab.
Bio: Zephyr Hameem is a second year medical student at HMSOM with a passion for studying the art of storytelling across all forms. She has a background in neuroscience and creative writing from Saint Louis University, and she completed her M.S. in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. As of now, her specialty interests are hem/onc and palliative care. In her free time, she enjoys singing, reading/writing, baking, taking walks, finding new restaurants, and video calling her family (and cat).
I spent a year and a half learning the intricacies of how the human body lives. Not once had I considered how it dies.
Sure, I learned about pathologies. I became familiar with diseases, disorders, and syndromes. I studied the symptoms, the physical exam maneuvers, the diagnostic tests. I learned to contrast normal function with its opposite, dysfunction. To identify patterns of physiology and pathophysiology. As a second-year medical student, of course my classes have taught me what happens when things inside of the body go wrong. My mind has been primed to recognize threats to general health and even to life.
But not death.
On my fourth day as a clerkship student, I became abruptly aware that despite the past 18 months of meticulous studying, something more common than the common cold had escaped my purview. When Dr. T, the palliative care attending physician, asked me for the signs of end-of-life, my response was an uncomfortable stare as I rapidly sought the correct illness script. I flipped through mental images of organ failure as if through the toy picture disk camera I played with as a child. Congestive heart failure. End-stage renal disease. Acute liver failure. Conditions that could kill you, but…
“Let me ask you this,” he said, noting my unease. “How do you know when a patient is actively dying?”
I hoped the procedure mask covered the rosy flush of heat rising to my nose and cheeks. I hadn’t even heard the term “active dying” before. Unlike the many diseases I had studied in my preclinical training, this wasn’t just a mismatch between textbook description and patient presentation. I hadn’t even stumbled across a practice question on active dying by accident.
But death? You don’t have to be a medical student or a healthcare worker to know when death is approaching. Some of my non-healthcare friends might even have a better visual of that than me, the realization torching my throat. Growing up on a farm, I was familiar with the concept of death at a young age. Coming from a large, tight-knit family, I had lost loved ones, attended open-casket wakes and funerals. I even completed full-body dissections of not one but two human cadavers.
But still, I did not know the face of death. I had never been there, never witnessed death itself. Until that morning, I had never seen a patient in the ICU and the most life-threatening condition I had encountered in the ED as a pre-med volunteer was a tick bite.
I was overwhelmingly humbled by the physician’s question and more so by the realization that I would not have recognized the dying patient if I had met him earlier that morning during rounds. For the first time in my life, I considered death not as a static state but as an active process. I now know to assess for nonreactive pupils, decreased urine output, Cheyne-Stokes respirations, and terminal respiratory secretions in a patient at end-of-life. Although often disturbing or frightening to families, I gained the understanding that these signs of organ system decline do not induce further pain. They can be painless, especially with the care of a hospice team, which can ease not only the suffering of patients but also of their loved ones.
I am now six months into my clerkship year, and I have not yet witnessed this inevitable process, both incongruent with and inseparable from life, called active dying. While I may not be prepared for the emotions it elicits, my hope is that I, too, may offer solace and comfort with the humility and grace Dr. T bestowed that day. My mind may still flutter, my face may still heat, and my throat may still burn, but when death arrives, I will recognize it. I can join the healers before me in honoring it and the very person death came to greet.
In Phase 1 of medical school, I learned how the human body functions and dysfunctions. In Phase 2, I’m learning how human beings live. And, I’m learning how they die.
Name: Mackenzie E. Fox
Cohort: 2022
Hometown: Charlestown, RI
Description of the work: This story captures the embarrassment, humility, and growth that are natural components of the medical student clerkship experience.
Bio: Mackenzie is a third-year medical student at HMSOM, born and raised in beautiful Rhode Island on a small family farm. She attended Providence College, where she flipped for the Friars on the cheerleading team amidst her studies in Biology and English. As a medical student, Mackenzie has sought ways to keep her creativity aflame by journaling, reading, baking, and spending time outdoors.
It was a Friday night, in the fall of my senior year of college. I had been working as an EMT on campus for two years and felt pretty confident in my abilities. A few hours into a quiet shift, our radios sounded dispatching us to a campus bar a few blocks away for an “intox.” “Great,” we think, expecting another in the sea of drunk students that made up about 20% of our calls as campus EMTs.
I was first to leave the ambulance and found our patient, a dazed woman in her late twenties leaning against a large man, the bar’s bouncer who had called for our help. I walked up to the patient and asked her what was going on. Through slurred speech, she told me she was “fine” and “just wanted to go hang out in the bar.” She looked upset but listened as I explained that we would have to check her out in the ambulance, at the very least. We were already there. Even though we had only been speaking for a minute or so, she seemed comfortable in my presence, like she trusted me. She leaned on me for balance as we moved into the ambulance. At this point, I thought she seemed okay - very drunk, but nothing we hadn’t seen before.
Once she was on the stretcher in the ambulance, I felt a sudden shift in her. My trainee, Evan, stepped in to begin assessing her vitals and as he reached for her wrist to take her pulse, she grabbed my hand. I watched her face twist in fear and anger. She did not want Evan to touch her arm or to be near her at all. She looked to me for help, clearly terrified. Before I could tell him to leave, she started lashing her arms out towards Evan, crying and screaming, “He’s here! Help me!” My patient looked to me for assurance and protection; Evan looked to me too, not knowing what to do or if he would be safe. I felt the immensity of my responsibility more than ever - in their most vulnerable moments, two people relying on me for guidance, for protection. My mind cleared and a calm washed over me, as though my years of guiding patients and loved ones through crises had prepared me for this exact moment. I held her hand and tried to hold eye contact. She seemed to calm down briefly; in that window of time I saw desperation in her eyes, not rage.
She turned to stare towards Evan at the far corner of the ambulance. Still holding her hand, I told Evan to leave and sit in the front with our crew chief, Alice. With Evan gone, my patient kept yelling and lashing at the place where he had stood. Alice yelled to me to check that I was okay and ask how I wanted to proceed. I had two options - I could call for NYPD backup, who would restrain her and heighten the situation, or I could continue sitting with my patient, comforting her and trying to keep her calm enough to safely reach the hospital.
I kept holding her hand and convinced her to look away from that corner, to return to eye contact with me. As we sat there, me urging her to keep eye contact a little longer, her trying to stay focused in the moment, her thoughts became a little clearer. After some guided breathing and a tense silence, she revealed to me she was not yelling at Evan at all - she was seeing her uncle in the corner of the ambulance, standing over her and taunting her. He had sexually assaulted her in her childhood and she was terrified he would do it again. She knew he wasn’t really there, but she was still afraid of his presence, real or not. Finally understanding at least some of what my patient was seeing and feeling, I felt I could keep us both safe. We left for the hospital. I asked if there was anyone we could call to come to the hospital and stay with her once we left, but there was no one. My crewmates tried to get an advocate for survivors of sexual assault to meet us, but they refused as the patient was not a student at our school. We convinced them to send someone because she so clearly needed the support, but when we arrived at the hospital no advocate was there.
I continued holding her hand and eye contact as much as possible as we walked her stretcher into the trauma room, a space usually reserved for victims of violence or serious medical emergencies. We spoke the whole time, grounding her in the present moment. In this room, surrounded by no fewer than ten doctors and nurses, my patient held tightly to my hand as she moved to the hospital bed and I gave my report. My crew left to return to shift, calling us back into service. I tried to take my hand away and leave her in the care of the hospital staff, but she gripped my hand tighter. There I stood until the nurse injected her with a sedative and she fell asleep, ever more faintly begging, “Don’t leave me here. Stay with me.”
In the years since this night, I often think about my experience with this patient and my decision against calling for police backup. I remain proud of the trust and safety she felt in my care for the thirty minutes we spent together, during her terrifying and isolating experience. Yet, I remember sitting in our office later that night, running the events in my mind and questioning every choice. I was ultimately safe, but how did I know I would be? Did I know? Should I have followed an instinct for self-preservation and called for the police anyway, better safe than sorry? I was just 21, how could I presume to know the right move? But somehow, I recognized her fear - I knew that I was reading the signals right, that my responsibility to my patient required me to think clearly, to trust my instincts, and preserve her well-being, so long as I would be safe to do so. I think about the immensity of the trauma she had experienced, and wonder what support, if any, she had received to help heal. Though her behavior had appeared violent and threatening upon first glance, something felt off, like there was more going on than meets the eye. Her absent expression and fear that arose inside the ambulance were in Evan’s direction but not towards him - something seemed amiss. She was not angry when grounded in the moment, looking into my eyes and explaining what she was seeing, only afraid.
Had I not given this patient the time and support to share her story and what she was experiencing, I could have easily thought she was just violent and dangerous, called the police, and compounded her trauma. She would likely have awoken the next morning alone, shackled to her bed, treated as a criminal. The more I learned, the more I empathized with her suffering and understood her behavior. I wonder what happened to her later that night, if any advocate or loved one arrived to help her, if any of her doctors or nurses were able to provide the support she so desperately needed. Did they have the time to be kind and patient, explaining every move in careful detail and holding her hand? Or were they overwhelmed and busy, leaving her lonely and afraid. I only know that by staying present and listening without judgment, I was able to learn her story and in doing so, change her experience that night, at least for those thirty minutes. Whenever I question why we take so much time and effort to learn the soft skills that feel like distractions from the rest of our immense workload, I remember this patient’s fading words and loosening grip as the sedative took effect. These can be the skills that matter most.
Name: Emma Maiman-Stadtmauer
Cohort: 2023
Hometown: Montclair, NJ
Description of the work: This is a story of a memorable patient during my time as an EMT. As the situation kept changing for the worse, I was left contemplating my sense of duty to myself, my patient, and my team, and what it means to work in medicine.
Bio: Emma is a second-year medical student at HMSOM, born and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. After working at an independent bookstore in high school, she studied English and volunteered as an EMT at Columbia University. In her free time, Emma enjoys reading as much as she can and NYT crosswords.
6:00 AM: my alarm breaks the silence of the morning. I squint at the screen that brightly reads, “Time to save some lives.” These were my mornings for nearly two years when I worked at a COVID-19 testing site. I was excited to help and connect with the community I grew up in, but I feared how long some days could be. I dragged myself out of bed, did my usual morning routine, and went to work.
My testing site was the sole provider of free and accessible COVID tests for the underserved communities of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Every day, despite the constant foggy weather, our busy site saw a seemingly endless line of patients. During surges, our small team cared for nearly 1,500 patients a day. Breaks were a luxury that most of us could not afford; we had a duty to protect our marginalized populations from the devastating virus. We sacrificed, but also longed for more resources for our patients and for ourselves, to relieve our burden. The smiles of our patients and my team, like a second family, were why I continued serving my community.
I became close with my colleague, Mel, a CMA who was applying to nursing school. Our time together kept the COVID burnout at bay: we bonded over discussions on stocks and cryptocurrency, taught each other our native languages, and listened to each other’s goals in healthcare. We both enjoyed hearing our elderly patient’s stories and connecting with them. After long days, our very cool supervisor sometimes bought my team pho, and we all debated whether Lao Gan Ma or Sriracha was the better chili sauce.
Mel left the company several months later to return to her home state. At the same time, I took time off to finish the rest of my medical school prerequisites. We had planned to eventually return to the company, but I did not realize our goodbyes that day would be the last.
When I returned to the site a semester later, I found out that Mel had taken her own life. All the emotions of what-if, grief, and regret welled up. Then, the downward spiral of self-blame: “I should have seen the signs; I should have listened more carefully.” The camaraderie of my team that helped us cope with losing patients to the pandemic had not prepared us to lose a member of our own. Healthcare workers were overburdened by the overwhelming number of sick patients and barely had time to save themselves. Mental illness is invisible. I had family members who attempted suicide, and it scares me to not know who around me may be next.
An oncologist I worked with told me that we must be strong enough to carry on the legacy of our fallen patients and colleagues by continuing to save lives with them in our hearts. In the following weeks, my team listened to each other’s needs, tried to smile with our eyes because our patients could not see our lips behind our N95 masks, and mourned our lost friend in silence.
6:00 AM and my alarm signals the start of another day. My screen still reads, “Time to save some lives.” Despite the bright screen blinding my unadjusted eyes, I now smile. Yes, it is time to save some lives. Mel, I got accepted into medical school; I won’t let you down.
Name: Raymond Huang
Cohort: 2023
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Description of the work: This piece is a heartfelt tribute to a colleague and friend lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting on the shared struggles of healthcare workers and the invisible weight of mental health challenges.
Bio: Raymond Huang is an M2 at HMSOM from San Francisco, CA. His current interests are Cardiology, Sports Medicine, and Psychiatry. He was a former San Jose State University D1 track and field athlete now turned avid rock climber always seeking his next adrenaline rush.
Sitting is the new smoking.
I transcribe the phrase in red.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” she said, the lilt of her voice like the upward slant of the words on my page. Hers to soften the assault, mine to squish the sentence amidst the columns of text already on the PowerPoint slide.
I dot the i’s. I curve the g’s.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” she said, with a sideways glance to her co-lecturer. Once her teacher, now an equal. A near-comical duo of young and old, of cat and dog, of modern medicine and traditional teaching. Cardiologists. Presenting a surprisingly entertaining review of primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.
I bookend the sentence with quotation marks in my notes.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” she said. The quotation marks remind me that those words came from her mouth. They are forever preserved on the zoom recording of our lecture.
I contain the statement within a red box. No, I erase it. Too abrupt. I contain the words in a bubble, a cloud of curlicues. The kind of clouds I drew in elementary school beside a triangular sun, slapped to the top-left corner of the paper without fail.
“Sitting is the new smoking.” With the sideways glance and the upward lilt, came a soft smile, the huff of a laugh that couldn’t quite qualify as a giggle.
A joke.
But cardiovascular disease, the topic of our education sessions today, is not.
My downcast eyes don’t need to shift to the front of the room, where they too sit upon stools before 160 first-year students, to sense the proclivity of it all.
How could something so benign as sitting compare to the cigarettes that were so demonized, that I was warned about since before I began drawing those triangular yellow suns?
I underline the cloud-shaped bubble, a harsh streak of red, thicker at the end of my strike, where the Apple pencil last touched the paper-feel screen protector covering the screen of my iPad. The expensive new tools that accompanied me to medical school. I’m still getting used to the smoothness as the stylus glides across the screen, even with the screen protector, and the cramp of my wrist as I try to create that traction, that scratch that I crave, of a real pen on paper.
“Sitting is the new smoking.” She has long-since continued the lecture - in fact, she never stopped - but those words in her sing-song voice are all that meets my ears and the red font all that meets my eyes. The simplicity of the statement, the starkness of the red against the white virtual page, send mixed signals in my soft, curved handwriting.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” I wrote into my notes. Now I’m all too conscious of my feet grounded upon the floor and the backs of my thighs pressing into the plastic chair. I sit a bit straighter. I continue annotating the lecture handout as I tune back in, dialing down the volume on my mental reverie. I reach for the water bottle beside me, out of thirst or out of habit, I’m not sure. Empty. But I do not rise from my chair.
Sitting is the new smoking, and I have three more hours of cardiology lecture to sit through until lunch.
Name: Mackenzie E. Fox
Cohort: 2022
Hometown: Charlestown, RI
Description of the work: This reflection on a preclinical lecture highlights the cognitive dissonance that exists within the medical field and the medical education system.
Bio: Mackenzie is a third-year medical student at HMSOM, born and raised in beautiful Rhode Island on a small family farm. She attended Providence College, where she flipped for the Friars on the cheerleading team amidst her studies in Biology and English. As a medical student, Mackenzie has sought ways to keep her creativity aflame by journaling, reading, baking, and spending time outdoors.
The apprentice watched anxiously as the hands of each clock throughout the room ticked in near perfect unison the final seconds of the minute, hour, day, and week. It was Friday afternoon, and he was eagerly awaiting his freedom. The day had been unusually slow, and he had spent most of the day interacting with various passersby who had been intrigued and fascinated by the luxurious craftsmanship of the grandfather clocks perched in front of the large glass window that faced the street. He realized that he hadn’t seen the owner of the hands behind these works in a few hours, an uncommon occurrence given the master was as much of a jovial salesman as he was an artist. Come to think of it, the young man thought, there hadn’t been much business in the past few weeks. The usual parade of scheduled viewings, repair appointments, and personal commissions had grinded to a slow trickle.
The sudden cacophony of various chimes startled the young apprentice. While he had been waiting with anticipation for this sound several minutes earlier, he now felt a sense of uneasiness. His master had always been reluctant to discuss the financial status of the workshop, and it didn’t take the young man much time for his mind to imagine what might be going on behind the scenes. He had taken on this position just under one year ago, but knew that he still had much to learn from the wise and skillful clockmaker. The apprentice shook his head, trying to clear from his mind any negative thoughts and focus on the upcoming weekend. He walked to the front door and flipped over the open sign, then turned around and entered the back hallway. His steps were slow and cautious as he approached the room where his master had been spending most of his time during the past few weeks.
The door to the workroom was only slightly ajar, and the apprentice could hear an occasional click and rustling of tools. He quietly pushed the old wooden door just enough so he could peer inside. He could see the older man hunched over his work bench, deep in focus on whatever task was laid out in front of him. After watching in silence for about a minute, the master craftsman let out a frustrated sigh and set down his tools on the bench. He sat motionless for several seconds. The apprentice was about to open his mouth when the master asked, “What is it, son?”
“Um, it’s five o’clock, sir,” the young man answered softly. “Ah, yes. Well you may go. I will lock up for the night.” The master had not turned around or sat up, but simply continued to stare at whatever it was that was laid on the table in front of him. The apprentice now knew that something was off. This behavior was uncharacteristic of the usually outgoing, friendly artisan. Whatever he was working on seemed to be consuming him altogether. The young man looked down the hallway, then hesitated and turned back to his mentor.
“Sir, is everything alright?” he asked.
“Yes, quite alright. Why don’t you head home, son.” “It’s just, well, usually, sir, you give me-”
“Please leave me-” The clockmaker raised his voice and turned quickly to face his young apprentice. In doing so, he had accidentally knocked onto the floor a small wrist-watch from the workbench. A horrified look of grief spread across the older man’s face as he stood up and saw the aftermath of his carelessness on the floor. The apprentice entered the room and slowly reached down to pick up the watch. With as much time as his master had been spending on this watch, he expected to find a rare and expensive vintage piece, but was surprised when he looked down to see a fairly modest chronograph that had clearly been well-used. The face was worn, the hands no longer ticking, and the strap frayed and tattered. The intricate mechanism of gears and pins inside was exposed and the apprentice could tell just by looking at it briefly that it was likely beyond repair.
“Whose watch is this, sir?” he asked gently.
“It belonged to-” the older man paused briefly and cleared his throat. “It belonged to someone very important to me. I promised him that I would repair it for him.” He turned his head away and looked back at the workbench. His apprentice inspected the watch again, confirming his initial assessment that any further attempts to fix the damage would be futile.
“I don’t think-” the young man started to say, but as the words began to exit his mouth, he could tell by the muted expressions and hung head of his master that they both knew the reality. The apprentice cautiously placed the watch back onto the work bench, searching his mind for something to say to his master. The roles had been reversed, as it was usually the older man who knew the exact words to use in any situation and always seemed prepared for every moment, whether one of happiness or disappointment.
“You could always mount it, keep it as a memento.” The apprentice’s offer was met with taciturn rejection. The clockmaker returned to the bench chair, sat down, and picked the watch and turned it over several times in his hands.
“I made a promise that I would fix it. This watch has great sentimental value, and I wanted him to be able to see it tick just one more time,” he said, then paused. “I worry that I will disappoint him by not making true on my promise.”
“I’m certain he will understand,” the young man said reassuringly, “it’s only a watch after all. I’m sure whatever memories it has are ones that will still be remembered long after this watch is put away. After all, that’s what’s important, right?”
The wise craftsman remained silent. His dedicated efforts to repair the watch over the past few weeks had left him both physically and emotionally drained. He had already considered giving up several times, but this meant far too much to him. Perhaps with just a little more time, he thought, I can finally find a way to fix it. He looked at the watch again, then up to his young apprentice. Maybe he was right. Maybe the sentimental value of the watch wasn’t truly in its physical form, but in the memories it represented, memories that will never break down, rust, or fall apart. Would it really be considered giving up if these memories still remained?
“Thank you, son. I appreciate the kind words, but I really should get back to working on this. It’s late, you should go home. I will lock up. You go and enjoy the weekend.”
“Sounds good sir, I hope you’re able to fix it. I’ll see you on Monday.”
The young apprentice left the room, leaving the skilled clockmaker alone in the quiet workshop. He stared at the broken timepiece in his hand, and for the first time in weeks, he smiled. Walking over to a large set of drawers in the corner of the room, the older man gently pulled the top drawer open and rested the watch on a small display stand. He closed the drawer, locked up the shop, donned his coat and hat, and walked out into the cold winter air. The slow, reluctant pace of the past two weeks was replaced by swift, meaningful strides as the man walked purposefully down the city streets. What had been a maze of buildings and alleyways two weeks ago was now a familiar path, and he quickly made the necessary turns to reach his destination.
The glass doors automatically opened and the man stepped inside, grateful for the respite from the bitter cold of the outside. He felt a brief rush of adrenaline in his stomach, not out of excitement, but out of fear. Although it had been only two weeks since the first time he stood here, the sense of dread that had been growing since felt like an overwhelming and unending amount of time. The doubts and anxieties began to fill his mind, but these cleared away after a few deep breaths. After waving to the security guard posted at the front entrance, the craftsman strode to the elevators and rode to the fourth floor.
Although he had walked up and down this hallway each day for two weeks, it still appeared to him as though he had never seen it before. Three doors on the right. There he looked in to see his father, lying motionless on a white bed, a plastic tube in his mouth and a tangle of wires and IV lines draped across his chest.
The monitors to the side of his bed chimed out a rhythmic pattern, marking the progression of time at the same rate as his father’s mechanically supported heart. He entered the room and sat down in the chair next to his dying father. He tried to hold back the tears, but just like the past fourteen days, he was unable to.
“I’m so sorry, Dad. I couldn’t keep my promise. I couldn’t fix it…” he said, choking back tears. The memories of his father came flooding back: visions of the first watch he had gifted to him as a child, nights spent together in the workshop crafting the beautiful designs of the grandfather clocks that would be displayed in the front of the shop, and the first time his father let him wear this watch. It was the most special of all, a gift from a friend who had fought with him during World War II. “I tried my best…All this time I was so focused on it, I lost sight of what was important, the meaning and memories behind it. Even though it is broken now, I’ll never forget what it means to me, what you mean to me.”
The clockmaker sat quietly and held the hand of his teacher, mentor, and dad. He knew that it was now the right time. He stood up and walked over to the nursing station where his father’s physician was sitting and nodded his head. No more words needed to be spoken. A group of nurses and the doctor gathered some supplies and entered the room. The craftsman took his father’s hand and placed the watch inside, closing his fingers around the frayed leather strap. The doctor pressed a button on the ventilator and removed the breathing tube from his father’s mouth. The doctors and nurses exited the room, and he was left alone with his father. After about an hour, the rhythmic pulses of the monitor beside him slowed and eventually stopped. As the tears fell down his face, he looked at the timepiece in his father’s hand and thought that he saw it tick one last time.
Name: Daniel Erickson
Cohort: 2020
Hometown: Ferndale, WA
Description of the work: A short story that explores the unending march of time and its intimate connection with life. Remember to reflect on the memories that we cherish even when our loved ones are no longer with us.
Bio: Daniel Erickson is a recent graduate of HMSOM and is now a PGY-1 at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. He has always enjoyed creative outlets such as writing music and short stories. Outside of medicine, he enjoys playing golf, kayaking, and spending time with his family.
